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“LAS VEGAS,” said Frank Sinatra, “is the only place I know where money really talks—it says, ‘Goodbye.'” But thanks to changing regulations and improvements in computing and mobile technology, you can now contrive to bid your money farewell from the comfort of your own home. Interactive gambling—a category that encompasses sports betting, poker, casino games, slots and other such wagers placed from a home computer, interactive TV or mobile phone—makes up an increasingly important part of the global gambling market, according to data from H2 Gambling Capital, but not an evenly distributed one. The world's biggest gambling market, the United States, remains its most divided. Betting is legal—encouraged, even, as Ol' Blue Eyes can attest—in Las Vegas and Atlantic City; most states have government-run lotteries; and horse tracks around the country are rolling in slots revenue. But online poker remains illegal (which is not the same thing as not done). China seems to have similar qualms. And the global uptake rate is steady, but not especially fast, which suggests that gambling remains a social endeavour. Penury loves company.

And in what sense can conventional gambling claim to uphold "fair play"?

The gaming industry is about screwing the statistically illiterate in society - throwing them scraps of false hope, and mixing the rape with a few exciting thrills.

Mankind's failure to intuit risk is a scourge on general financial (and hence material) well-being. It takes a good mathematical education with a little probability theory - or tales of horrific personal suffering - to overcome the industry's innate attractions.

Men represent the bulk of gamblers, true, but women are not "content," they have more concern for security. A guy who blows his paycheck in Vegas has his fantasy of winning big. His wife and kids have other priorities, like food and the mortgage payment. If men could only be made to understand that they have a much greater chance of losing than winning, interest in gambling might dwindle. But there's the old devils, the XY gene pair and testosterone working to overwhelm common sense: give any guy a couple of free beers and he thinks he's the late Amarillo Slim.

The problem with on-line gambling is fair play. It is almost impossible to enforce fair play since the house could very well use a rigged algorithm. During inspection, if such inspections were practicable, they could very well present clean code.

The only situation I can think of is some kind of government cloud from where these applications would be forced to run. Thus the code would always be open to inspection. It is really not practical. But this is where the problem lies, enforcement is just too impractical.

What do you consider so special with the Swedish suicide rate? Sweden is 30th (below China, Russia, Finland, France, Austria, Hong Kong, New Zealand, etc) in the list of countries with the highest suicide rate:

Anyway, the first chart shows "Interactive gambling as % of total". Therefore, if I were the only one gambling in the whole country and I gambled USD 1 once a year online, then the graph would show 100% for my country, although that wouldn't be very alarming.

I think it would make more sense to show gambling losses as a % of GDP. This would really show the relative addiction of gambling in the world.

Casino or internet gambling are zero-sum games; while stock and commodities markets are devices for the efficient allocation of resources. Investments are directed toward companies or products that have the best chance of making a return -- and directed away from declining industries. By creating the liquidity necessary for timely trading, when circumstances change, they actually greatly reduce the risk for investors.

I was talking about an old joke, that Northern Europeans are high on suicides (and low on daylight), which was probably true some time ago.
As a % of GDP Sweden actually did not do bad either.
Graph and perception can be wrong. :)

You might say that about many forms of gambling such as: roulette, blackjack, craps, and lottery tickets; where, regardless of skill, the player is predestined to lose in the long run. However, it is possible to be a long-run winner betting on sports, such as horse racing or football. Punters, who study the track records (literally) of the players, and who are mathematically gifted, can win more often than losing. The same can be said about poker, where the players' relative skills -- including real-time analysis of complex probability distributions -- separate the winners from the losers. There are several wealthy professional poker players.

Betting is legal, probably because that´s what you to in financial markets. I guess if it was banned it would still exist, namely under the supervision of organized crime. But - then, Wallstreet is defined by an organized, but legal activity, which has much more serious repercursions for people´s financial health than what we call organized crime. The western world is reaping the fruits of organized betting on Wallstreet and in the LSE. I guess some people just can´t be saved from themselves.

Secondly, even in statistics, things are not really straightforward for such highly nonlinear distribution as far as a simple concept of mathematical expectations go. It becomes, effectively, a regime changing structure that, in case of lottery tickets, makes some financial states possible.

I've never understood why someone would like to gamble against someone they don't know in the first place (against someone they do know I can understand; you're having fun with friends, and at worst your friends will take your money). But I have an even harder time understand why on Earth people would play against strangers for money online: I mean, how in the world do you know that the other people at your virtual poker table aren't all controlled by the same person? How do you know the game is fair?

As part of this growing global phenomenon you forgot to mention online financial spread betting and CFDs which are almost as popular as sports betting and casino games nowadays. They are equally addictive and certainly an equally effective a way of losing money, I can assure you!